Playlist

Recorded

June 25, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 611 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Isabel K, Neal Kosály-Meyer [July 2001]



Even as it has been recently, my 1981 synclavier piece Aku, then, was upfront in my thinking-about. Here it is again: playing in the background, an articulate teapot whistle, sizzling along with an occasional recorded pronouncement [from my 2001 text piece Confessions of a Polyphonist]. But again, all in the background. Presence and balance. Balancing presence to those present. Bells pick up pitch material or project their pitches into the prerecorded space || of course it's all prerecorded now || teapots and kazoos comment: a group composition discussing the brought in sound on its own terms,  double sudden amp feedback.

A Choice of Weapons - The Sermon [from The Funhouse Comp Thing]

Action movie scene: the guy off the street hero being introduced to the weapons cabinet. This is that music, and it's not just the title.

Banned Rehearsal 784 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Isabel K, Neal Kosály-Meyer [January 2011]



Tinclatsky puppet theater music. Don't know where that word came from, but I wrote it in my journal

so I thought I'd share it. The Mighty W in its latter days of glorious to the end. Melody in extremis, avoiding exit lingering long on the sense of ending soon.

June 27, 2017
Suspended - Denise Glover [from Pathways]

The rhythmic sense plays with the difference between mass and weight. The mass is clearly present, everything is affected by it. It wheels in Kubrik-ian grandeur, there is simply no earth to which it is bound.

Die Kunst der Fuge Contrapunctus XI - J. S. Bach - Lionel Rogg

Forward at all moments. Forward within all moments. Dogged. Imperative. The cathedral organ just eats this music up, or is it the other way around?

Quartet in G Major opus 76 #1 Hob. III:75 - Haydn

Nothing is hidden, it is all made plain. Life is rich! Enjoy!

Don't Forget To Mess Around - Louis Armstrong [from Hot Fives & Sevens]

Packed in a poke.

Hell And What It Is - Rev. Emmett Dickinson [from Goodbye Babylon]

Murmur like bees beneath singing low murmuring hymns, burners lit.

I'll Be Rested (When The Roll Is Called) - Roosevelt Graves and Brother [from Goodbye Babylon]

Just two voices I think, but each so distinctly rich with formants they frequently confound numbering. A shaker. A guitar.

Thermodynamics - Howard McGhee [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Fleet and light, pedal to the metal just to the moment before entropy might kick in.

Criss-Cross - Thelonius Monk [from Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz]

Ah. Room to breathe! A little english with the hips, airborne.

I Didn't Know What Time It Was - Peggy Lee [from Black Coffee]

The very model of a through-composed performance. She picks you up at the start and plops you down at the end. You have been taken for a ride and never knew it 'til you woke in the ditch.

Running Scared - Roy Orbison [collected from Dave Marsh's Heart of Rock & Soul]

Probably should have studied more how Peggy did it before he tried that trick. He's got a certain amount of power and range, but finesse? Whazzat?

Just Like A Woman - Bob Dylan [from Blonde on Blonde]

Is it just me or does he spend an awful lot of time telling you who you are? Turn the mirror around Bob.

Winterwood - Don McLean [from American Pie]

A pretty voice, but it gets old fast.

Fame - David Bowie [from Changes One]

A cage of rhythm locked down tight, dried vine vocals entwining.

Shine On You Crazy Diamond / Wish You Were  Here - Pink Floyd [from a collection of great dance songs]

Utterly without hurry :: an aspect of PF that continues to endear.

June 28, 2017

Thanks to Steve Kennedy for the images

Banned Sectional 5 AK NWM - Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [January 1986]

Yowl and hiss. Subtle flange (equipment issue) like wind several walls away. Consistently not leisurely. Busy, but unhurried, intent, methodical, keeping at it, focused. Happy to be a fly on the wall even these 30+ years later.

My Home - Infamous Menagerie

Sample hyper-slowed, joined occasionally by drumming. On some edge between a what-happens-if-we-play-along-with-that and a truly weird-ass instrumental you hear the next morning and wonder what you were thinking. My people!

Banned Rehearsal 423 - John E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Holden K, Neal Kosály-Meyer [May 1996]

Recalibrations and re-collaborations, divergent but mutually visible threads. Wonderful as a struggle, but still a bit of a struggle.

June 29, 2017
Barbara H (cover of Fountains of Wayne song) - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey,  Isabel K, Neal Kosály-Meyer [July 2001]

Put a push-pin here, partway between drop of a hat covers of Wild Thing to full on full on Your Mother Should Know rock and roll.

Two-Part Invention - Gavin Borchert - Keith Eisenbrey

Gavin's piano music somehow seems conscious of itself, or perhaps its voices are conscious both of each other and of their own processes. Old-soul music.

The Way West - Brian Cobb [from Campfire Songs]

. . . is to regiment forward, to prolong the day ever so incrementally. Sun Chaser.

This Little Light of Mine (Autoheterophony) - Keith Eisenbrey


What is the question to ask of this? What itch does it scratch? Cram the familiar together, wad it up tight, press it hard. Hope to find some aspect of it that is elicited only so. In a sense it's like Lucier's I am sitting in a room, except that the room in this case is a space composed of my music ear and the recording device.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

June 26, 2018
Gradus 314 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

I got to thinking about perfect pitch (I don't have it). Even here where the pitches are few (just four pitch-classes to choose from, named up front) I have to calculate what any particular instance is from the nearby intervals. I can't imagine what it might be like to know a pitch by a name directly, instantly (and I allow how I might be (probably am) completely misunderstanding what having it is like). Plus side: I can hear pitches just fine, but I hear them without name, without category, can divvy them up however ad lib.

Playlist

Preface

"In short, the composer who has presumed to speak reveals himself in the guise of a speaker who is compelled to compose, with words." Martin Brody "The Age of Milton" Open Space Magazine Special Issue 14 Spring 2012

Texts

Recorded

June 20, 2017

Aku (Bard Chapel Version) - Keith Eisenbrey

Kingston Bridge, ca 1982

Aku exists in several versions, none of them the pristine digital archival copy that might have existed had I had the know-with-all in 1981 to imagine such a thing. The best copy for which I had playback capability was the cassette copy made for me by the listening library folks at the University of Washington. It was this copy that I took with me to Annandale-on-Hudson in 1982 and played for Ben Boretz and my fellow students. Ben thought it could use some space around it so Bruce Huber loaned me the borry of a guitar amp and a second cassette deck, and a couple of hours, so we could play it into the chapel and record the results. By the time I ripped it to digital the recording had deteriorated somewhat, causing a certain amount of wobble.  A long story whose point is simply that Aku, as a personality, seems to actively seek out noise. Perhaps this is why we get along so well.

Exploration of the space-noise continuum. Parts of partials lag behind other parts of partials. Speeds of speaking. The speculative purpose of composition by design is, one hopes, to elicit, out of its designed complexity, unforeheard, undesigned wonders, such as these. Not for the faint of heart. Awesomely cruddy. Puts up a hell of a fight || flicker of light on water || durations hang past rational valuation.

Hey, Mr. Rain (version 1) - The Velvet Underground [from Another View]

Callling down the powers from above, a rain dance in song. Feature: a far more subtle tempo shift than in Heroin.

Banned Rehearsal 247 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [February 1991]

Near Burns, Oregon 1990

Candles burn in the barn fly attracted to flame becomes the wick stories in rhythm sipping around the edge of rhythm's gloss and falling in drunk being drunk. Radio: not atonement theology, but atonement pornography. The radical onslaught. Though even here a compositional tactic: wait till "A" has been forgot then spring "A" on you again and again, playing with the rhythm of forgetting and expectation. Richly sonorous affront on all fronts to professionalism's hegemony. It is important to cease thinking in marketable chunks, sound bites, convenient 12 packs.

June 22, 2017

Heart Attack - Sleater-Kinney [from Call The Doctor]

Almost perfect! Cut the vocal before the last 5 words remind us what song we are hearing and you've got it. Fine Feature: Chorus has a shrill hook nearly unrecognizable as vocal in pedigree.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

June 10, 2017

Banned Telepath 56 170610 Anchorage A - Aaron Keyt

June 18, 2017

Banned Telepath 56 170618 Anchorage B - Aaron Keyt

June 19, 2017

Banned Telepath 56 170619 Seattle - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy

Banned Rehearsal 937 170610-19 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt

Steve's Guitar (one of many)

I tried something a bit different in mixing the telepaths together. Rather than plopping Aaron's contributions down in the middle somewhere I simply looped them over the top of our porch session. All Aaron all the time! I figured they came so far to be here they ought to be given several contexts.

Playlist

Recorded

June 11, 2017
Die Kunst der Fuge, Contrapunctus X - J. S. Bach - Zoltan Kocsis

Sequences establish a rhythm of (usually) stepwise motion, allowing cross-rhythms of modulations and quasi-modulations - as though another music were going by in the background at a different tempo.

I love how the grandness of the denouement is fully established within what is really a quite thin texture. We hear it as grand because, in order to hear its logic, we imagine each note as sustaining at full volume - virtual grandiosity with virtual sustain.

Quartet in E-flat Major, opus 76 #6 - Haydn - Amadeus Quartet

Not sure this is really what's happening, but what I wanted to be happening is a sequence of variations occurring within single iterations of a larger theme and variations - both T and V constructed out of shorter Ts and Vs.

June 14, 2017
Birdwell Blues - Nolan Welsh, Louis Armstrong [from Alan Lowe's Really The Blues]

A tale: police harassment. "You know I been here before." Truth.

Don Redman

Trouble Why Pick On Me - Don Redman, Red Allen [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Unexpected wonders: that voice, those perfectly executed parallel trills thrown in just for fun, showy tonguing, a tightly organized arrangement.

Woke Up This Morning (With My Mind On Jesus) - Roosevelt Graves and Brother [from Goodbye Babylon]

Keeping it lively, everything is slap. Slap guitar slap vocal.

I'm Through With Love - Sarah Vaughan [from Interlude - Early Recordings 1944-1947]

Nothing wrong with this performance (it's flawless) but it fails to convince me, it never lifts off.

Walking My Lord Up Calvary Hill - Wilma Lee and Stoney Cooper [from Goodbye Babylon]

The Passion according to just folks.

A Woman Alone With The Blues - Peggy Lee [from Black Coffee]

Sung as a single thought, a through-composed line. Tubular bells!

Now Is The Hour - Leo Diamond [a Rescued Record]

Rather bizarre, but it sounds like he was quite an interesting guy - trying to make the harmonica acceptable for the hi-fi crowd. The 45 that found me had suffered considerably, with much of the fi scuffed off the top.

Leopard Skin Pill-Box Hat - Bob Dylan [from Blonde on Blonde]

Kind of a mean-spirited blues when it comes right down to it.

Everybody Loves Me Baby - Don McLean [from American Pie]

In spite of his apparent attempt at humorous self-laceration, this still comes across as narrow and airless.

Young Americans - David Bowie [from Changes One]

Thick and taut, a line pulled past where it ought to break but that just won't.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

June 12, 2017
Gradus 313 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

June 15, 2017
Etudes - Keith Eisenbrey

These are five little pieces from 2000 that started life as clarinet duets: "Coiled", "Fragment", "Dance" "Air", and "Misterioso". I arranged them later as piano fingering puzzles. I was in the early stages of working with mod-17 pitch sets, essentially asking myself the question "What would regular music sound like if the modular interval were 17 instead of 12?" So, yes, this is what I think regular music is like.

Jerseyville Illinois - Your Mother Should Know [Karen Eisenbrey, drums; Neal Kosály-Meyer, vocal and piano]

In anticipation of a hoped-for pro-studio recording project I recorded three demo takes.

Playlist

Live

June 9, 2017
Zach Tries To Not Ruin His Masters Recital
Brechemin Auditorium, School of Music, University of Washington, Seattle
Zachary Buker, tenor
with Ingrid Verhulsdonk, piano; Yoojeong Cho, soprano; Daniel Frizzell, lute; Denna Good-Mojab, soprano; Sarrah Flynn, flute; Alessandra Barrett, viola; Isabella Kodama, cello; Tyler Kim, violin; Judith Kim, violin, (and the comic relief crew)

In Alto Mare; Stornellatrice; Nevicata - Ottorino Respighi
Fussreise; Verborgenheit; Der Tambour - Hugo Wolf
Lamento; Testament; La vie Anterieure - Henri Duparc
Odi l'aura - Beethoven
Ich und du- Peter Cornelius
Come Again, Sweet Love Doth Now Invite; If My Complaints Could Passions Move; Can She Excuse My Wrongs? - John Dowland
Wilt Thou Be Gone, Love - Stephen Foster
Torna a Surriento - Ernesto De Curtis
l'Ultima Conzone - Francesco Paolo Tosti
Musica Proibita - Stanislao Gastaldon

We were afraid that a late bus would make us late guests, but we made it just minutes before the start. After an opening Marxist shtick (Harpo, that is, in a broadly Buffo vein, [or Victor B, or Professor PS]) to sweep whatever dustcurdles of pretense might lurk in that storied space, Zach proceeded to inhabit each song utterly. Having rid the event of seriousness, the actual performances stood out in stunning relief. As wonderful as the performances were (and they were) it is this aspect of the evening I keep coming back to - a brilliant idea about how to allow each song to stand proud in its own glory, without drenching it first in concert seriousness.

Other thoughts: How wonderful to hear such a voice in an intimate space! His comrades in song were wonderful (though Karen thought his bombshell partner for the Foster was going to give me a heart attack - I survived, feeling no pain). What wonderful characterizations! And impeccable comic timing to boot. Another random image: during the Wolf, oddly, I kept picturing him as the Jack Haley Tin Woodsman - something about the pitch of the voice, and the shape of the face.

All that and there were random prizes (though no puppies) scattered liberally throughout. We ended up with three lovely little saké cups held together with masking tape. When we got home (thanks for the ride, Melissa and Adena!) I deftly crumpled the tape into a loose mass, presented it to Obb the cat for sniffing, let it fall to the floor, moved it twice with my finger. It kept the cats occupied all night.


Recorded

June 3, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 63 - Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Neal Kosály-Meyer [January 1986]



Our third live show: Brechemin Auditorium, University of Washington, January 9, 1986. The first part consisted of pretty much what we had done at our second show in the same space the previous July, but rebranded now as Three Compositions No Breaks. The second part was a set of Sudden Songs:

Bickleton Burger [Keyt]
Hey Hey Hey [Eisenbrey]
The Picture On My Wall [Kosály-Meyer]
I Wanna Girl from Venice California [Eisenbrey]
Instrumental [group]
Electric Garbage [Kosály-Meyer]
Tacoman [Eisenbrey]
Quiet Song [Kosály-Meyer]
Ain' No Easy Woman [Eisenbrey]
Wild Thing [a cover]
and a bonus bit after the audience had cleared out:
Aaronsbundler March [Keyt]

Brechemin 1986

We are weaving through the room accumulating the noise of our devices, filtered through the noise of our devices. Clunky and Clumsy. Seamless we are not. We layer thick, and not with clear lacquers but with ill mixed craft paint and dustcrud. We incant to the muses. First part: We know what we are doing but not what what we are doing will make. Second part: We know what we are trying to make our doing do, but not how to do the doing that does that that we are trying to make our doing do. In the midbit between the parts one can hear Neal and I, separately to different audience groups, holding forth on what we are doing. Spreading the gospel. This episode is, neatly, a concretion of the kind of argument Banned Rehearsal is.

We do DIY with a vengeance. After listening to it all over again after these many years all I could think to myself was "What were we thinking!?" And yet, how grand it is. In many ways I am in awe of our youthful recklessness.

June 7, 2017
losing an eye - Infamous Menagerie

A murky slime-infested dive five rooms back of the swamp. But in a really good way.

Banned Rehearsal 422 DAT - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [April 1996]

Attentionfarbenmelodie

June 8, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 610 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Isabel K-M, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer


We discuss the failure of the engineer (me) to record the first part of the session. A mix of extreme delicacy and extreme blattiness. Depth of field.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

June 5, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 936 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Playlist

Recorded

May 28, 2017

We're Almost Down To The Shore - Jimmie Strothers [from Goodbye Babylon]

tune your banjo
to the thrum of the head

tune your voice
to the beeline precision of the string

that is to say, if you want to sing in tune, this is the gold standard

Flo Flo - Sam Donahue [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

what have we with which to speak?
music is our ticket to public consciousness

When I'm In My Tea - Jo Jo Adams [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

among ourselves our own late night comic songs reasserting the creative imperitive

Dinah Washington

I'm A Fool to Want You - Dinah Washington [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

gives PL a run for her money as sexiest voice ever

It Ain't Necessarily So - Peggy Lee [from Black Coffee]

the words themselves wouldn't strike one immediately as torch song material, delivery is everything.

Little Sister - Elvis Presley [collected for Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

in our history with recorded music rock and roll is simply among the first that capitalized on the hugely increased horsepower available from amplification 

May 29, 2017

I Want You - Bob Dylan [from Blonde on Blonde]

never had a problem with the 'fact' that he doesn't sing in tune - always figured he hit every note he aimed at - gestural intonation

Crossroads - Don McLean [from American Pie]

a patina of heartfelt worldweary depth - one assumes (probably in error) that there is sense to be made of it

Diamond Dogs - David Bowie [from Changes One]

pushes the studio effects on the vocals to the point of being kind of a mess
far from my favorite DB

AKU - midi with reverb - Keith Eisenbrey

the notion of tempo relies on pulse
the notion of expanse relies on itself

my fling with larger than life
certainly brash certainly complete

I'm Gonna Move Right In - The Velvet Underground [from Another View]

game for guitars jamming in turns

Banned Rehearsal 246 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [February 1991]

orchestral violin frenetic flute kalimba far away [are counterpoints a form of criticism?]

N once posited of BR that we don't know what we're doing, that is, we are doing don't knowing, knowing in doing don't knowing, knowingly we do don't knowing

[mic'd a certain way, sul ponticello makes a pretty good imitation of old-time radio static :: what stations can we pick up on the sul pont?]

If anyone cares, this recording was made on a mid 70's Sanyo cassette tape player (still works). The mics were two Realistik PZMs taped to the wall (they still work too) no school like the old school

AARON says BURRd

I'm Not Waiting - Sleater-Kinney [from Call The Doctor]

love the angles at which the verse and chorus and bridge snag each other

May 30,2017
Banned Rehearsal 609 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Isabel K, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [June 2001]

barnacles and shore birds crab hiphopbeatbox on the radio waves :: we find our way out of Kammersymphonieland :: that is a gull or several

4 Midi Pieces - Elaine Barkin [from Open Space 21]

coy little pitch bends
playing the part, in a stage drama, of music
a diversely situated spirit
a gnarly timefeel

Figure Study 7 - Keith Eisenbrey

between waiting for possibilities to evaporate and leaving space for others to attack, caught in a strobeflash frozen into time

Pietracatella  - Denise Glover [from Pathways]

love how the tempo discovers itself established

May 31, 2017
Der Kunst der Fuge Contrapunctus X - J. S. Bach - Lionel Rogg

a platformer in more dimensions than are strictly possible

String Quartet in D minor, opus 76 #2 Hob.III:76- Haydn - Amadeus Quartet

to be sub-titled 'the overtly contrapuntal'

No Foolin' Around

June 1, 2017
High Fever - Freddie Kreppard, Cookie's Ginger Snaps [from Alan Lowe's Really The Blues]

synchronized tonguing

Bandit Cole Younger- Edward L. Crain [from Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music]

cautionary tale
voice from the grave
news clip op ed
how fare the outlaw
in this outland?

O Lord I'm Your Child - Elder Otis Jones [from Goodbye Babylon]

preaching as a collaborative endeavor whipping up to singing

Benny's Bugle - Lester Young [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

more o' that fine tonguing together

Ecuador - Stan Kenton [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

ladies and gentlemen, we now give you dynamic deep focus

Deliverance Will Come - Johnson Family Singers [from Goodbye Babylon]

tight homophony square as square is square pulled back at ends of verse
no solo voice (one voice out of many)

Gee Baby (Ain't I Good to You) - Peggy Lee [from Black Coffee]

vibe and bass solos are killer

Midnight Ride - Paul Revere and The Raiders

self promotion and novelty song all at once, and a seed for Bill & Ted

Stuck Inside of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again - Bob Dylan [from Blonde on Blonde]

hyper singsong delivery opens up compositional space [see above gestural intonation]

Empty Chairs - Don McLean [from American Pie]

Rick Wright

another one that would have been better off without the strings & other claptrap, but not much better

Rebel Rebel - David Bowie [from Changes One]

different readings of the same character, actorly

Sheep - Pink Floyd [from a collection of great dance songs]

lots of room for light show and Rick on the keys. (Karen liked the picture of Gilmour so much I thought I'd give her some more eye candy.)

In Session at The Tintinabulary

May 29, 2017

Gradus 312 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

hillside contours
that one is off like an alien space saucer into disappearance
the waited silence resonance of the holy
last scent of sunset before evening reeks into night

Playlist

Live

May 20, 2017
The Magic Flute
Seattle Opera
McCaw Hall, Seattle

When it comes right down to it, I've probably spent more time trying to make something of TMF than Mozart did. And after all that it isn't much more than a very pretty picture book - sex education in a patriarchy.

May 26, 2017
Beverly Crusher
Dead Bars
BOAT
Ramona
Barboza, Seattle

What a wonderful evening for people watching downstairs at Barboza! Karen and I, after a lovely dinner at the Tin Table, (up a venerable flight of steps on the second floor of the Odd Fellow Building, one of the few unmistakably grown-up places to be at that end of the hill) staked a place to sit beyond the bar from the stage. We could see both stage and crowd, the scene at the bar, and through two round windows the faces of the newly arriving coming down the stairs. Fine cinema in the play of the small groups of friends mixing. All the young people so beautiful, so awkward. I got to thinking about how Seattleites dress up to go anywhere. For a punk show on the hill you've got to look just right, but that just right also has to look like you just grabbed something out of a drawer.

The bands acquitted themselves well: BC nailed the tempo shifts from song to song (have they heard the Seeger String Quartet?); DB is ever a joy, bubbling with good feeling; B was a like a history lesson, in a really good way - the influences were there, shades of sounds from all over, integrated with great care; R, I want to say sounded like the 80's, but like the actual lived-in 80's, not the "the-80's-are-in-again" 80's.  One of those nights when the party on the stage and in the room are one.

Recorded

David Gilmour

May 21, 2017
Jean Genie - David Bowie [from Changes One]

Structure bit: how the little rave-up in front of the last chorus sets up the long rave-up-from-below that ends it.

Money - Pink Floyd [from a collection of great dance songs]

A little something for all those guitar aficionados out there, Gilmour laying it out real pretty.

Banned Rehearsal 62B - Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Neal Kosály-Meyer [January 1986]

The next day we were performing at Brechemin, and this was the rehearsal for the 2nd part of the show, consisting of 'sudden songs'. That particular project was at an awkward stage, since they weren't part of the regular sessions anymore and we felt that we were performing something from the past instead of something we were doing then. The last 20 minutes or so of the tape are taken up by some collective soul-searching, which is most of the reason I'm not posting this one on soundcloud.

Immediate Impound Zone - Infamous Menagerie

Heldenalto fronts a glorious noise.

May 23, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 422 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [April 1996]

Holding a 40 foot long drowsy dragon puppet aloft. Its parts are not solidly connected to each other, so pushing the whole anywhere is cumbersome. Intricate negotiations until it gels and a long winding down.

Jeremiah 17:5-8 - Keith Eisenbrey - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey

This was the last take we did at Jack Straw in May of 2005.

Gradus 91 - Neal Kosály-Meyer [January 2006]

Water dripping in a dark cavern. Silence as discipline, as the act of listening without acting, expounding non-speaking.

May 24, 2017
Missing The Trail - Brian Cobb [from Campfire Songs] - Craig Garretson

Panic! Every strange detail could be an attack.

Banned Telepath 43 Seattle - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy [February 2016]

Part of what became Banned Rehearsal 903. Scribbling tiny notes on tiny papers.

May 25, 2017
Die Kunst der Fuge Contrapunctus IX - J. S. Bach - Zoltan Kocsis

The slower second fugue makes explicit what we always guessed was going on inside the whole time.

Quartet in D, opus 76 #5 Hob.III:79 - Haydn - Amadeus Quartet

This is intense. One could imagine the late Beethoven quartets as an attempt to do something even half as fine. An insider's music, convulsive, grabs body-mind and wrests it aloud.

Blackville - Hazel Meyers [from Alan Lowe's Really The Blues]

The implicit top-down hierarchy of concert music gets a (deserved) bum rap for its stratification of labor (conductor is in charge, players do what they're told / master and slave). But this more demotic music developed its own hierarchy of function. Rhythm supports melody, everybody knows their place.

I Can't Get Mississippi Off My Mind - The Dorsey Brothers [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Arrangement as an assertion of control, chaotic forces kept on a leash. Hard high hat cut off.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

May 22, 2017

Banned Rehearsal 935 170522 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Playlist

Live

May 13, 2017

Gamelan Pacifica presents

Lou Harrison at 100 Years:

The Seattle Connection

featuring Gamelan Pacifica and Pacific Rims Percussion Quartet

directed by Jarrad Powell

with guests:

Heather Bentley, viola and violin

Jennifer Caine Provine, violin

Paul Taub, flute

Bonnie Whiting, percussion

Maria Scherer Wilson, cello

Wayward Music Series, Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

May Rain (1941)

Gending Park Chokro (1976)

Threnody for Carlos Chavez (1978)

Pathetan Wantah, laras pelog pathet lima (in remembrance of Lou)

Ladrang Epikuros (1981-82)

Air in G Minor (1947)

Končerto por la Violono kun Perkuta Orkestro (1959-1940)

timbre

mix at

certain edge

of the set of overtones

that particular sort of

slowing down we do at

ends - coded differently

as a structural cue

it turns everything

into a microtonal

landscape

the parts rely on each

other not just to

keep together but

to be what they

are within what

they are singing

a particular

way with the

sensibility of

how things wander

off

it is extraordinary how something so ordinary could be so extraordinary

drone

membrane of a soap-bubble lake

flute swallow-fleet

rippling swift across

Recorded

May 14, 2017

We're Gonna Have A Real Good Time Together - The Velvet Underground [from Another View]

What we want to hear from the cool: "Join the party!"

Banned Rehearsal 245 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [January 1991]

Jump right in. magnetic tape echo spiral residue reconfigurable membrane morphing drum we can
hear our bodies moving by their occlusion of sound. Hangs in there for a good long time not being music. Try different settings! Fluid transit intention. Now we're plucking and plunking.

My Stuff - Sleater-Kinney [from Call The Doctor]

Female point of view as such, in contradistinction to the more typical pop-sensibility: What from a male point of view the male would love to believe is the female point of view, but probably isn't, at least not straight out, without the slow poison.

Jeremiah 17:5-8 - Keith Eisenbrey - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey

The third take from the Jack Straw recording session of May 2005. The reverb, strangely, confines the music, envelopes it, gives it skin and face.

327 - Black Horse [from The Funhouse Comp Thing]

In what social context is this appropriate? War? Riot? Steam Letting? The danger of raw emotional evacuation is that the steaming turd has a social effect, and it accumulates.

Isaiah 60:1-5 - Keith Eisenbrey - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey

A recording we made at home in January of last year. What gives the composer in me pleasure is how the accompaniment spotlights the voice, following it closely, like an aura, a glow.

Paradox Bagatelles - Craig Pepples - Sascia Pellegrini

each atom spaced so as to reveal aspects of itself that would otherhow not make impact :: these atoms are all and each clearly about the thing they are all and each saying, spoken clearly :: the sense in which they are a plural of bagatelles is that those animals, those bagatelles, must be all in the sequence, lumpily interspersed, grazing.

May 16, 2017

Die Kunst der Fuge Contrapunctus IX - J. S. Bach - Lionel Rogg

Long tones are short-term drones. A florid fugue plays the surface of a sedate fugue.

Quartet in C Major, Opus 76 #3 Hob. III:77 - Haydn - Amadeus Quartet

Kept safely deep within this very model of a repertoire string quartet (all to be admired and copied): worries, hesitations, concerns. The finale, party crashing, wandered in from some minor key quartet.

String Quartet in F Major, Opus 135 - Beethoven - Amadeus Quartet

Scraps of bits, unaware they are part of any sort of design. Commentary and disagreement. Full of sudden shifts, shortcut modulations, make do with where we have gotten to [in order] to get where we must go. Nothing else quite enflames the soundbox like scribble-bowing, glowing hot.

May 17, 2017

Deep Henderson - Charlie Straight [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Fat precision. Like a sloppy drunk clearing a pool table to the last spinning ball. No sophistication, but deep for sure.

Easy Come, Easy Go Love - Sunny Clapp [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Crammed (frat boy phone booth). More fat precision.

Crying Holy Unto The Lord - The Blue Chips [from Goodbye Babylon]

Appropriation of the profane by the sacred, or invasion of the sacred by the profane?

Get Ready for Christmas Day - Rev. J. M. Gates [from Goodbye Babylon]

Digging through the rhythm of language into the substrate of melody - it breaks off just before ignition.

Boyd Raeburn

Over The Rainbow - Boyd Raeburn [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Runs through more presets than a casio. Every possible arrangement of the tune in quick succession.

It Could Happen To You - Bud Powell [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Same deal as above, but all by his lonesome. (Chopin!)

My Heart Belongs To Daddy - Peggy Lee [from Black Coffee]

The image of: independence from the beat, as though just talking, except that it never wavers from being exactly where it needs to be. She may be hiding behind the male point of view's desire for what they want the female point of view to be, but she does it while openly dripping the fatal drops into your drink.

Hello Mary Lou - Ricky Nelson [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

Star Vocal! Hear it Here! (a blended orchestration of echo effects) Repeat with instruments.

One Of Us Must Know - Bob Dylan [from Blonde on Blonde]

Excuses, excuses.

Vincent - Don MacLean [from American Pie]

Well Don, I'm sorry, but "snowy linen land" is just puke-worthy. Wodehouse had your number decades ago (see "pale parabola of joy".)

In Session at the Tintinabulary

May 15, 2017

Gradus 310 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

Quasi-similar motion (pitch-class nearness by shortest route) as countermotion. Take that, MF!